Alice: An Unexpected Role Model   As I read through Alice’s adventures, I was surprised by how much her character and her story resonated with me and many of the topics we’ve discussed this year. How is my life as a freshman college student at all similar to the bizarre encounters that Alice has? I live in a world that obeys all the usual laws of nature, I have yet to encounter any talking animals, and I stay about the same size, whereas Alice’s adventures take her through a world where the unusual and improbable are the norm. In his piece Oxford in English Literature, Dougill draws an illuminating parallel and suggests that “in the progress through Wonderland the young rectory boy/girl exhibits all the culture shock of a freshman transposed from home and dropped into college life” (Dougill 278). Alice suddenly becomes another freshman, lost in the strange, unfamiliar, and sometimes unwelcoming new world of a college campus.             With the idea of Alice as an example of a fellow college student in mind as I reconsider the book, many of her actions suddenly become more meaningful and she serves as a strange sort of role model for navigating unfamiliar territory. One of the main similarities between us is our simultaneous excitement and fear of growing up. Both of us are thrown into worlds where we are suddenly free of any supervision and are free to make our own decisions. Not entirely sure what to do with this newfound freedom, we have to figure out a way to act without someone over our shoulder always telling us what to do. Ultimately, this is perhaps our first time practicing the art of being grownups. Alice takes on the role almost immediately, scolding many of the animals. She reprimands the grunting baby-turned-pig, telling it in a very adult tone of voice that “that’s not at all a proper way of expressing yourself” (Carroll 63). And yet that role still does not feel quite right.             The most powerful connection between myself and the Wonderland heroine is our constant search for identity. Alice finds, though she has been playing the role of a confident and competent adult, that she is still uncertain of who she really is. She and I both continually question out identities. I as easily as she could have remarked that “yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’” (Carroll 23).             Because she experiences a share of the most important freshman musings and is able to flourish in the strange world in which she finds herself, Alice provides a role model to those of us on a similar adventure. What I admire most about her character is that, regardless of the bizarre situation or the unfamiliar animal chastising her, she never stops following the path she wishes to follow. Though she may question who she is and be questioned by others, she retains her insatiable curiosity and a subtle kind of courage. Her actions, though played out against a peculiar background, make her a role model for all of us wandering through the same adventures.